After the success of the initial festival, Lees and West took a serious risk – they brought the Big Day Out to a national audience, playing to fans in capital cities around the nation.

Whilst Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell had had a success with the Lollapalooza touring festival in America, a touring festival of the size of Big Day Out was an untried prospect in Australia, and its success would rise or fall on the level of crowd support.

They were also astute as to who they chose to bring to the festival – whilst Iggy Pop was the undoubted ‘star’ of the festival, there was also bands whose stars were on the rise, including Sonic Youth (already an institution in themselves) and Seattle stalwarts Mudhoney, whom many state were the pioneers of the grunge sound.

There was also Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, a different incarnation of Beasts of Bourbon, and the Clouds came back for more. The highlight for many were a then almost unknown act called Helmet, with their brutal guitar assaults and amazing presence enrapturing the crowd.

But the real success of the 1993 Big Day Out was that in each city local bands got to play as well, meaning that the fans in each city had something they knew and loved in addition to bands that they’d heard on the now national Triple J.

All of a sudden, people expected a Big Day Out in 1994 – it had taken on a life of its own.

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